Found on Flickr: State Library of New South Wales

Eliza Lawson, May 1845, photographed by George Goodman. Click image to visit on Flickr.

Found on Flickr this week: From the Flickr Commons, a collection from the State Library of New South Wales.

These two photographs are from a subset of the collection called "Costume and Dress."

Dulcie Deamer in leopardskin costume, 1923, Swiss Studios. Click image to visit on Flickr.

The Flickr Commons is an amazing, growing repository of historical photographs from libraries and institutions around the world. Most of the photographs in the Commons have little or no known copyright restrictions. It's a great resource for artists, students, and casual browsers alike.

Steve Brodner Interviewed by Steve Heller

Steve Brodner has posted an interview (by Steve Heller) on Drawger. Anyone curious about why artists do what they do should read his point of view.

Brodner speaks with remarkable clarity about visual communication:

SH: Many of your caricatures are politically motivated. Do you believe that your art will have some impact on politics? SB: Nope. I learned a long time ago that the point of it has got to be the love of communication in pictures with strangers about important things in a way that has a chance to be meaningful and compelling. How people react is up to them. Some engage, some don’t. My job is to light the lamp as best I can.

Read on.

Show Us Your Process!

Foggy drawing, desk view. Click image to view full-size.

I love it when artists blog about their creative process, giving us look behind the scenes. It's important to remember that artists are not magicians. Our creative work does not appear out of thin air; it's work. Here are some of my favorite artists' blogs with links to process-related posts.

Debbi Kaspari is an Oklahoma artist/naturalist currently at work on a field guide to the birds of Trinidad and Tobago. She also manages to write a wonderful blog showcasing many of her sketches, plus bonus things like drawing birds from paper models.

Abbey Ryan makes a painting a day. Wow. (Here are some other artists who also make a painting a day. And they have a book!) Have a look at this video to get an idea of how she builds her paintings.

Jason Hackenwerth documents the construction of his fantastical sculptures in great detail.

James Jean blogs about his sketchbook and works in progress at ProcessRecess. (Some images, while beautiful, are NSFW.)

Also: The Tools Artists Use Creative Workspaces blog Artists' Studios Flickr pool

A casualty of The Process: one of my palettes after a painting session. See more palette photos in this Flickr set.

To learn more about my process, you can look in the navbar to your left, under "Category" and click "Process." Here is one of my favorite posts showing in-progress paintings.

Moving Creativity Blog

Christian Pitt of Mainsite Contemporary Art in Norman pointed out a new blog about creativity in Oklahoma. Moving Creativity is written by Mary Ann Osko, an Oklahoma art afficionado and PR consultant over at Osko Communications. Check 'em out.

Mary Ann is right in saying that Christian makes magic happen. I think this sums it up:

I’m friends with so many artists and I want to make it so we can pay to go to the dentist.

True.

Eric Humphries Oklahoma City Triptych at aka gallery

9:02 (central panel from Three Minutes in American History) by Eric Humphries. Learn more at Paintedatrocities.com.

From the press release:

Oklahoma City based artist Eric Humphries is known for his cartoonish renditions of true life historical atrocities and in honor of the 14th anniversary of the OKC Bombing, Humphries will be unveiling a series of three paintings memorializing this tragic event entitled Three Minutes in American History.

“This is the first time I have tackled a subject so close to home,” says Humphries. “I am definitely much more anxious about this series than usual. Everyone in Oklahoma felt the bombing in one way or another.”

To prepare for the project, Humphries visited the Bombing Memorial several times and took some 200 photos of the site. He also spent weeks researching each element of the bombing, as well as the roles of the real life people involved. “ I tried to incorporate all the major parts into the composition. They are all so important to the over all experience of visiting the Memorial and I wanted the series to reflect that. It’s been an emotional experience,” admits Humphries. “But I am very glad to do my part in memorializing the victims of this horrible act.”

Each large, forty by forty eight inch, canvas is framed with its own Gate of Time, a concept central to the actual Bombing Memorial, and in turn tells it’s own story. The 9:01 canvas represents the time before the bombing and depicts the burning of the Branch Davidian Compound at Waco, Texas where McVeigh first became incensed about the federal government. The 9:02 canvas shows the actual explosion of the Ryder truck used by McVeigh in the attack. And the 9:03 canvas depicts the Field of Empty Chairs and Survivor Tree complete with ghostly spirits ascending to god‘s outstretched hands.

“Three Minutes in American History“ can be see at the aka gallery in the historic Paseo Arts District in OKC from April 3rd through May 1st. Humphries, himself, will be in attendance April 3rd for the opening. For more info please call 850-0175.